[Mediawiki-l] noob questions

[Dave Howorth]

Elliott F. Cable wrote:
>>I have one page where I'm documenting how some of my code works. It's
>>Javascript so the text is liberally scattered with HTML tags that I'm
>>discussing. But mediawiki is *interpreting* these tags as HTML! I see
>>that this is a feature from http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/ 
>>Help:Editing
>>and http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:HTML_in_wikitext even tells me
>>which tags are affected. But I can't find anywhere that tells me  
>>how to
>>turn this feature off when I don't want it. How can I write text that
>>includes HTML tags as literals?
> <pre> <---- Makes text look like code, but I expect you know that.
> <nowiki> <--- Turns off wiki. Totally. Everything below here will  
> appear AS YOU TYPE IT.
> function thisIsCode() {
> 	$done = true;
> 	return true;
> }
> </nowiki> <--- Turns back on wiki. Continues as normal.
> </pre> <--- closes code block.

I probably didn't explain very well. The HTML tags are embedded in text. 
Here's a typical sample:

"The normal solution for a single-line input choice is a <select> 
element, but these aren't too good at displaying large text fields such 
as the description and don't allow nice formatting to separate fields. 
So I was using a <table> with an <input type="radio">  column but that 
takes up too much screen real estate."

The <table> tag completely screws the page. I want wiki formatting 
turned *on* so that I can use text styling as normal. But I don't want 
HTML tags interpreted at all. What I want is something like <nohtml> ... 
</nohtml>.

I think your suggestion has me typing <pre><table></pre> everywhere, 
which doesn't seem to fit with the wiki notion of simple text 
preparation. Plus. it doesn't actually work! It makes the text look like 
this:

"The normal solution for a single-line input choice is a <select> 
element, but these aren't too good at displaying large text fields such 
as the description and don't allow nice formatting to separate fields. 
So I was using a

<table>

with an <input type="radio">  column but that takes up too much screen 
real estate."

The least annoying workaround I've found so far is to write all the tags 
like this: < table >. But that's a PITA as well.

Cheers, Dave